Wednesday, April 04, 2007

The Nasty Party

In 2004, the then-Chairperson of the British Conservatives, gave her party the unfathomably stupid label of The Nasty Party. In an address to the Conservative Conference, she said:

"Yes, we've made progress, but let's not kid ourselves. There's a way to go before we can return to government. There's a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies, You know what some people call us: the nasty party," Mrs May told a stunned conference.

Now, I am not one to compare the New Zealand Labour Party to the British Conservatives. Far From it.Labour are liberal, not conservative. The kind of racist, bigoted, homophobic agendas that the British party has stood for over the years and the kinds of nasty, thuggish leaders they have entertained have not really been a feature of the Labour Party approach - well, apart fron the nasty, thuggish leader. Labour's problem has been an addiction to power, and a growing middle finger to the electorate.

Sometimes, however, a creepy liberalism does win its way through. And while people here will see Labour as the "nasty party" for all sorts of reasons, it is a definite brand weakness for Labour that they are seen as tough and uncaring and dont give a hoot about democracy. Apart from a few outstanding individuals like Taito Philip Field, who has bravely stood up to the more aggressive throwbacks that he shared his party with before he left, the general tone of Labour MPs in the smacking debate has been nothing but nasty, sinister, and a total disregard for the electorate, demoicracy andthe politicaol process.

They have chosen to utterly desert their new-found attachment to their suport base, and to gallop off into true Nasty Party territory. They are writing columns in GayNZ.com, supporting and funding the likes of the the AIDS Foundation, Family Planning Association, and groups such as Plunket, Barnardos, the Children's Commissioner and all sorts of other advocacy commissions like the Families Commission,not to mention their own Rainbow division, etc, all to make an hysterical nonsense of what is really quite a simple issue about banning smacking, while at the same time telling groups like Focus on the Family that Labour's extreme left wing views over ride any views of the majority.

Labour will come to regret this. They may remember that they won in 2005, at the end of the day, because they stole the election with taxpayers money and then changed the rules after the election to make it legal. They may remember it because they still havent paid the money back. They have given the big Steve Maharey "f*** you" to the electorate. Mainstream New Zealand is pretty mainstream these days. To line up with a bunch of regressive sexual deviants, Christian bashers, pinko lickspittles, Government-funded liars and and lesbian losers to lie to the public about an emotive issue and whip up totally underserved hysteria as well as whipping up their own caucus will fatally undermine democracy in this country until the next election.

So in a way the longer this Section 59 debate goes on the better. I want the queer community and the child advocacy groups who have their head in the sand trying to drum up a PR campaign because the Nasty party doesn't know how to - to be really, really clear that most of the Labour Party -- except their so-called conservatives who have been shut up by the whip -- have chosen to twist the truth seeking partisan gain, and have lined up with the dickheads of the loony secular and predominately childless left to mislead Kiwi families about a simple issue of public policy.

Every single meeting I go to in the 2008 campaign, I'll be raising this evidence of Labour showing its true face as the Nasty Party. I hope others do the same.